bluepiano: Each is an account of a voyage ending in disaster whose survivors are heading for an unearthly sort of place. Poe's tale is mostly of the voyage and Bernanos's mostly of what ensues. Both are great reading.

He is called the master for a reason. Poe's only novel is short, and in the style of the times filled with informative digressions, but still manages to create a miasma of dread and a blinding pace. You will be constantly surprised, and very few of those surprises will leave you confident about venturing into the ocean.... ( )

I must say--this one is a strange one. When I first started reading it, I was thinking how beautiful Edgar Allan Poe's writing style was. But, the story is a slog at times. Sorry. It took me a month to read this short tale. The middle drags with too many longitude and latitude references and descriptions of bizarre animals.

And Edgar Allan Poe--don't you just feel sorry for the guy? He had to be weird beyond measure. He is preoccupied with the human body, birds eating dead humans and people murdering and eating people. What is it with him and human flesh? (I'm thinking of the Telltale Heart, too, murdering and cutting up a body in small pieces and stuffing it under the floorboards.) Yuck.

He also has this decided paranoia. You always wonder if he is just freaking out or if he's really in danger. (I'm thinking of The Raven, too.) Paranoia abounds in this work too. He has a preoccupation with being buried alive. He has a preoccupation with black and white. I really should read it again and look for all the references of black and white--they abound. One really needs to look at race relations through this novella, since it was written in 1838.

So, why did I read it? I'm reading a series of 5 novellas from American authors to get a feel for the American writer and the development of American Literature. I've read Benito Cereno by Melville, Parnassus on Wheels by Morley and now The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Poe. Next up, Cather and Fitzgerald. Apparently, this little novel influenced American literature in a great way, including Melville and Lovecraft, and Jules Verne even wrote a sequel.

This is a story of a young boy who runs away to the sea, and it is a classic shipwreck story with mutiny, deaths, storms, islands, animals, and longitude. Essentially it is a survival story multiple times over--but the ending is abrupt and very strange. I'm still trying to figure it out. Why is the water hot in the antarctic? There were a lot of loose ends in this story--where did that come from? How is that possible? Is he paranoid or is something really freaky here? ( )

Claimed to be Edgar Alan Poe’s only novel, but it reads to me like a collection of three, possibly four, short stories. It was published in 1838 before he had achieved significant sales as an author, he was making a living as a critic, reviewer and writer of articles and stories. A year later he published a two volume collection of his short stories: ‘Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque’ and the stories in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym would not have been out off place had they been included.

The frontispiece to the “novel” gives the game away almost at once:

COMPRISING THE DETAILS OF A MUTINY AND ATROCIOUS BUTCHERY ON BOARD THE AMERICAN BRIG GRAMPUS, ON HER WAY TO THE SOUTH SEAS, IN THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1827

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE RECAPTURE OF THE VESSEL BY THE SURVIVORS; THEIR SHIPWRECK AND SUBSEQUENT HORRIBLE SUFFERINGS FROM FAMINE; THEIT DELIVERANCE BY MEANS OF THE BRITISH SCHOONER JANE GUY; THE BRIEF CRUISE OF THIS LATTER VESSEL IN THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN; HER CAPTURE AND THE MASSACRE OF HER CREW AMONG A GROUP OF ISLANDS IN THE

EIGHTY-FOURTH PARALLEL OF SOUTHERN LATTITUDE;

TOGETHER WITH THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURE AND DISCOVERIES STILL FURTHER SOUTH TO WHICH THAT DISTRESSING CALAMITY GAVE RISE.

If this all sounds like a blurb to suck in readers to an adventure story which will titillate and excite then it would not be far wrong from my reading of the book. The titillation is provided by the reference to horrible sufferings and atrocious butchery, while the excitement is the fantasy of what lies beyond the eighty-fourth parallel which remained uncharted at the time. It would be another 60 years before Robert Falcon Scott in the ship Discovery got passed 82 degrees South and discovered the Polar plateau.

The continuity between the three stories is provided by Arthur Gordon Pym who in each of the tales is in danger of death by starvation; first on board the American Brig the Grampus where he is a stowaway locked in the hold and must survive a mutiny taking place above him and his reliance on a friend who can no longer get to him with food and water, then on the hull of the brig where he and three companions are marooned following the retaking of the vessel and its near destruction through violent storms, finally on an island in the warmer waters beyond the 84th parallel where he is trapped by hostile savages. Poe is at his best when describing the sufferings and and vicissitudes of people in a desperate situation and where there appears little hope of survival. He has a way of communicating the desperation of his characters plight that is both macabre and exciting.

The Cruise on the British Schooner the Jane Guy in little known waters and which visits some of the remotest known islands like The Kerguelen Islands and Tristan D’acuna reads like a travelogue, something that might appear in the National Geographical magazine and has given rise to some people thinking it could have been inspiration for Herman Melville’s style of writing in Moby-Dick. The final section/story in the novel is the discovery of a mysterious group of islands in the warmer waters that Poe tells us lie beyond the ice towards the South Pole. We are now reading a fantasy, a story that has led to this book being heralded as early science fiction. Poe provides us with a surprise ending that takes into consideration the events of the final section, but bears little relation to what has gone before.

This is a collection of nautical adventure stories that are well written and very readable. Poe is able to provide plenty of atmosphere in stories that kept me wanting to turn the pages (can you say that when reading on a Kindle?). I just don’t see it as a novel and so as a collection of short stories it is rated as 3.5 stars and as a novel 2 stars. ( )

It's also exactly what you would expect were you to imagine Edgar Allan Poe writing the story of a sea voyage. Things go badly. I recommend that you read this novel, even though I can't exactly recommend the novel. You will have an opinion. You will ask yourself deep questions, like: "where did the dog come from?" and "where did the dog get to?" And you will be amazed at how every sentence sounds remarkably like something Poe would write. Pick any sentence at random and you will see what I mean. Let me try that exercise now:

In the only full length novel that Edgar Allan Poe ever wrote, he tells a tale set at sea of Arthur Gordon Pym. He sails around the globe, and during his misadventures at sea, he experiences a mutiny on board, a terrible storm resulting in a shipwreck, and a run-in with a tribe of cannibals. In order words, all sorts of madcap mayhem fun. As far as the novel itself goes, I wasn't wildly impressed. It seemed to ramble at times and most of it wasn't terribly compelling. I'm not the biggest fan of Poe's writing other than some of his classic stories and poems.

On the other hand, there were many familiar elements in the story that other writers emulated in their stories. On that basis, I will give Poe credit for coming up with some innovative story lines that stood the test of time. Certain aspects of the novel stood out in that regards. One is the uncharted land with a savage tribe. Another is drawing the shortest straw to face one's death. There is a whole pirate element to it and some macabre aspects that I appreciated. Overall, although I wasn't overwhelmed by the novel, I can at least appreciate it.

Wikipedia in English (1)

This is an electronic edition of the complete book complemented by author biography. This book features the table of contents linked to every chapter. The book was designed for optimal navigation on the Kindle, PDA, Smartphone, and other electronic readers. It is formatted to display on all electronic devices including the Kindle, Smartphones and other Mobile Devices with a small display. ************ The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Edgar Allan Poe's only complete novel, published in 1838. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym who stows away aboard a whaling ship called Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym including shipwreck, mutiny and cannibalism. The story starts out as a fairly conventional adventure at sea, but it becomes increasingly strange and hard to classify in later chapters, involving religious symbolism and the Hollow Earth. — Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. More e-Books from MobileReference - Best Books. Best Price. Best Search and Navigation (TM) All fiction books are only $0.99. All collections are only $5.99Designed for optimal navigation on Kindle and other electronic devices Search for any title: enter mobi (shortened MobileReference) and a keyword; for example: mobi ShakespeareTo view all books, click on the MobileReference link next to a book title Literary Classics: Over 10,000 complete works by Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Dickens, Tolstoy, and other authors. All books feature hyperlinked table of contents, footnotes, and author biography. Books are also available as collections, organized by an author. Collections simplify book access through categorical, alphabetical, and chronological indexes. They offer lower price, convenience of one-time download, and reduce clutter of titles in your digital library. Religion: The Illustrated King James Bible, American Standard Bible, World English Bible (Modern Translation), Mormon Church's Sacred Texts Philosophy: Rousseau, Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Engels Travel Guides and Phrasebooks for All Major Cities: New York, Paris, London, Rome, Venice, Prague, Beijing, Greece Medical Study Guides: Anatomy and Physiology, Pharmacology, Abbreviations and Terminology, Human Nervous System, Biochemistry College Study Guides: FREE Weight and Measures, Physics, Math, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Statistics, Languages, Philosophy, Psychology, Mythology History: Art History, American Presidents, U.S. History, Encyclopedias of Roman Empire, Ancient Egypt Health: Acupressure Guide, First Aid Guide, Art of Love, Cookbook, Cocktails, Astrology Reference: The World's Biggest Mobile Encyclopedia; CIA World Factbook, Illustrated Encyclopedias of Birds, Mammals

Poe's only book-length narrative, recounting his Nantucket-born hero's adventures, misadventures, and discoveries, and his survival of shipwreck and capture by cannibals, as he journeys toward the South Pole.